Team RD #27 Race Car

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I just got home from the shop. Today was the longest day I’ve spent on the car yet and I’m definitely glad to say that it’s over. I’ll follow the same format as last time. First you get to see me do the hardest work on the car yet, then you get to see updated cage pictures. Let’s get to it.

What could be worse than scraping and brushing wheel wells you might ask? How about the bottom of the car. Everything is completely upside down, you have to hold a heavy saw above your head for 12 hours, and all of the crap you’re sanding off the bottom of the car falls directly on top of you. Then to make things worse, it’s the largest surface area there is.

After quite a while I had managed to finish most of the seams. This is an absolute must for the seam welding to be done under the car (there are a few major seams not completed yet in this picture):

The seams are bad enough, and most people wouldn’t even spend the time to do them because it’s extremely hard work. However, I wasn’t just going to stop there. This car is all about taking the weight saving mentality of the last race car to the next level. I continued scraping the bottom of the car for 8 hours and removed about 20 pounds of material. Combine this with the fenders, and just the exterior scraping was good for 30+ pounds.

Quite honestly, I’ve never made a bigger mess in my entire life. By the time I was done, the material was everywhere.

Half of it was all over my suit, on my face, and in my hair.

Holding the saw over my head for over 10 hours while wearing a respirator completely drained me. I was about ready to just pass out in the chair once I took the mask off. 

I figured my face and hair would never be this dirty again in my life so we captured the moment with a really scary looking cave man pose:

Then somehow I managed to go eat some food and come back for more grinding. This time I tackled the entire transmission journal inside of the car. This would be my last opportunity before the door X’s went in.

Here’s a picture from a while ago so you can see the brown and grey spots on the transmission journal:

And here’s the “after” picture:

That completes the day’s activities that I took part in, but Kyle was busy doing other things. Here’s some pictures of the roll cage progress.

The main hoop X went in as well as the diagonals that connect the top of the main hoop to the rear struts. An additional bar will also be installed to connect the bottom of the main hoop to the rear struts:

Here’s where the top diagonal connects to the strut. The bottom will connect at the same point:

Some pretty welds up at the top of the main hoop where all of the bars connect:

And the bottom of the main hoop with about 80% of the welding done:

From the trunk, looking through the rear strut X:

Then the cuts were made in the firewall for the bars to pass through to the front struts:

Here’s the bar in place. A plate still has to be welded to the strut before the bar can be welded in.

Once that’s done a bar will be put in to connect the 2 struts together. The bar will bend in to the firewall and about a foot of the bar will be welded directly to the firewall itself.

There’s still quite a few bars to go, but we’re getting there. Everything should be done early next week.